Help...bottle bombs.

[Sodabottle]

Hey all. I don't post much, as I'm new at this and have nothing really to share beyond asking questions. Second ever batch of mead is chilling in carboys.

First batch we bottled back in December. It was good and "inert", done fermenting, clear, we added two chemicals to stabilize it, (I don't recall the names right now but a winemaking store provided them...one was to prevent bacteria growth and the other was to prevent the yeast from reproducing, to essentially kill the ferment...) and it had stopped bubbling or fizzing in the carboy. It's been fine for 6 months.

The first sign something was amiss came from the opening of this silly little grolsch bottle we had filled up with what was left of the mead (which wouldn't fill a full bottle.) We figured for giggles we'd open it at 6 months and see how awful unaged blueberry mead is. (Not that awful, really.) But when we opened the bottle, that stuff sprayed everywhere like a shaken bottle of pop, and was "fizzy".

Now, we've lost two bottles to popping corks. We've got a few more than the corks are protruding from, that look like they may go soon. I assume the heat/humidity of summer has somehow messed them up, or that the yeast was stealth chilling in there.

My question is, are we doomed now to just let the bottles pop, and probably have undrinkable weird fizzy mead in what's left that survives, or can we decork them, and pour the mead back into carboys to sit longer/add more of the stabilizer and wait until they are 100% good and "dead"? TBF, looking at the bottles there is more sediment in them that I'd like, too, so going a step backwards would give us the ability to work on that. Or should I just call it a waste of a ton of good honey and bin them all?

I was expecting to have issues with our first ever batch, but I was really looking forward to having at least some of the mead, substandard though it may be/have been.

The next batch is a plain sweet mead, and I've been letting it sit, only racking off the lees now and then, for a good long while, and it can continue to sit. :/

 

[RachmaelBenApplebaum]

KMBS (potassium metabisulphite) and Potassium Sorbate aren't going to kill a fermentation outirght. I'm assuming you backsweetened after hitting it with the chemicals or tried to kill it while still sweet? Neither will flat-out stop fermentation. I'm sorry to say but the person at your LHBS told you a fib. K-meta/KMBS prevents oxidation and the growth of wild yeasts, potassium sorbate prevents further growth of the yeast population but doesn't kill them either. So, even if the mead was reasonably clear it still has yeast in suspension (it's microscopic) that's able to metabolize leftover sugar and hence, cork-pushing, bottle-bombing action! How do I know? Same thing happened to me, the only fix really is to take all the mead that's ready to push cork and (carefully) put it in a fridge, then consume it as fast as possible. Sorry to hear a good batch went janky, but it's not a total loss, just bear in mind the ONLY surefire way of stopping refermentation is sterile filtration or pasteurization, and I'm not even certain of the latter.

 

[Sodabottle]

Good to know for future. The mead isn't really "drinkable" right now, it needs to age...a lot more. It's not awful, but between drinking and tossing...well...

Will the fizziness die down and the mead age appropriately in any bottles if they survive?

And could I get away with pouring it all back into a couple of carboys and giving it more time?

 

[IJesusChrist]

If you collect it all and rebottle or store in carboy you risk oxidation. Since its already fizzing and splashing all over, this could be a serious problem.

That said, letting some meads breath (oxidize for a bit) actually improves their flavor dramatically. I've had a few bottles of commercial meads where I will open them, shake them up, let them sit, repeat 2-3 times, and have their flavor dramatically improve - especially if any H2S is sensed.

Fizziness will not die down with time, as long as the bottles are sealed, you're going to have carbonated drink.

Sparkling mead isn't a bad situation though.

 

[Sodabottle]

If they have the chemical in them to help prevent oxidization, will that help? Avoiding oxidization is a big part of why we bottled this stuff when we did--we were under the impression that letting it sit in carboys is not ideal.

Now, my other stuff has been left in carboys honestly out of sheer laziness, but I racked it off the sediment, then again when I backsweetened...now it's been about 3 months and there's a teeny layer of sediment I'm going to rack it off of again.

The blueberry stuff that's poppin' now wasn't backsweetened, it was racked after it cleared, then left for a bit to make sure it had stopped bubbling, then bottled. Clearly it needed...way more time.

 

[fuelish]

My best suggestion....refrigerate and drink it as quickly as possible ... one great way to make young mead very drinkable is to blend it with something when serving...various fruit juices, Sprite, whatever. Blueberry juice can be found in any local grocery store around here, and this here place is certainly not the epicenter of rare and exotic foodstuff....you can call it sangria mead...or something It's not the end of the world, you kive and you learn...but still, drink the "mistakes"

 

[bernardsmith]

mead and wine ain't beer and the only way to know that you have no viable yeast in your bottles is a) to take a reading of the specific gravity before you bottle. A gravity of 1.000 means that there is still fermentable sugar and unless you have filtered out the yeast then this can still ferment. I would be looking for a gravity of close to .994 and I would measure the gravity three times over a period of several weeks to check that this reading is constant, and b) allow your wines and meads to age and that means racking into sanitized carboys (onto K-meta ) every two or three months for about 6 or 9 months or more. This process of racking and aging removes almost all the viable yeast and the K-meta and K-sorbate is able to inhibit the reproduction of any remaining cells.

 

[WVMJ]

You can pour back ALL of your bottles of mead into an appropriate sized carboy, top it up, put an airlock back on and let it get done fermenting. Take a gravity reading when you mix it all together and after it clears again and no bubbles take another reading. If you have bubbles in your bottle it is not going to oxidize pouring it back into a carboy, its full of CO2 so be careful not to foam it up over the top. Any chance you took a beginning gravity when you started? Aging in carboys for mead is a GOOD thing, we often leave ours in for a year or more with no problems. WVMJ

 

[NZ-beekeeper]

You can pour back ALL of your bottles of mead into an appropriate sized carboy, top it up, put an airlock back on and let it get done fermenting.


What would you "top it up" with?

 

[bernardsmith]

You can pour back ALL of your bottles of mead into an appropriate sized carboy, top it up, put an airlock back on and let it get done fermenting.


What would you "top it up" with?

You could use sanitized glass marbles to take up any excessive head room or you could add a batch of similar wine you are making or add from a bottle of commercial wine of a similar or complementary type. Another option is to use a smaller carboy and so you have no excessive head room in that vessel and then store any additional wine in bottles with suitably sized drilled bungs and airlocks (You can buy drilled bungs that fit the neck of wine bottles. You might look for 1.5 L bottles rather than the .750 L size or half gallon growlers)

 

[IJesusChrist]

A more cooler option is to buy some argon, and purge your carboy with Argon.

Argon is a very, very dense and inert gas. It will make a blanket of gas over the mead, keeping it oxygen free.
http://www.winedevices.com/product-...HAQ&gdftrk=gdfV26791_a_7c378_a_7c954_a_7c7760

 

[NZ-beekeeper]

You could use sanitized glass marbles to take up any excessive head room or you could...

MARBLES! YESSS Why did I not think of that?!!?